NOW AND THEN
I had scarcely recovered my equilibrium and become able to give an
account of myself before I was formally called on by the “Chief of the
Bureau of Public Utility” of the country to make a statement about the
Negro problem in my time, Dr. Newell having informed him that I was
interested in that subject.
Here follows the substance of what I wrote as I read it over to Dr.
Newell before sending it:
“Many changes considered well nigh impossible one hundred years ago
have taken place in almost all phases of the so-called Negro problem.
One of the most noticeable instances to me is the absence of slurs at
individual Negroes and at the race as a whole in your newspapers. Such
headlines as ‘Another Coon Caught,’ ‘The Burly Black Brute Foiled,’ ‘A
Ham Colored Nigger in the Hen House’ and ‘This Coon Wants to be Called
Mister,’ are, to me, conspicuous by their absence. In the old days,
in referring to a Negro who had made a speech of some merit he was
called ‘Professor,’ but in making a reference to him as being connected
with politics the same person was dubbed ‘Jim’ or ‘Tom.’ Fights
between three white men and two Negroes were published, under glaring
headlines, as ‘Race Riots.’ The usual custom of dealing out the vices
of the Negro race as a morning sensation in the daily papers evidently
fell into ‘innocuous desuetude,’ and the daily papers having dropped
the custom, the weeklies, which were merely echoes of the dailies,
also left off the habit, so that now neither the city people nor
farmers have their prejudices daily and weekly inflamed by exaggerated
portrayals of the Negroes’ shortcomings.
“The character of no individual and in fact of no race can long endure
in America when under the persistent fire of its newspapers. Newspapers
mould public opinion. Your organization for the dissemination of news
has it in its power to either kill or make alive in this respect. Our
organization, called the News Distributing Bureau, was formerly in the
hands of people whose policy designedly necessitated the portrayal of
the Negro in his worst light before the people, in order that certain
schemes against the race might be fostered, and seemed to take special
delight in publishing every mean act of every bad Negro, and leaving
unrecorded the thousands of credible acts of the good ones.
“Like Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, this wholesale assassination
of Negro character in the newspapers was strictly a political ‘war
measure,’ intended for political use only. Its design was to prejudice
the race in the eyes of the world and thus enable the white supremacy
advocates, North and South, to perfect the political annihilation of
the Negro. The Negro farmer knew little about what was going on; he was
making corn and cotton, and to tell him in public assemblies would be
considered ‘incendiary,’ and ‘stirring up strife between the races,’
and the individual who might be thus charged would certainly have to
leave ‘between two suns,’ as the phrase was. However, the general
desire among leading Negroes was for peace at any sacrifice, and they
studiously labored to that end. The South ought to have thanked the
Negro preachers and the Negro school teachers for the reign of peace in
that section, because it was due almost wholly to their efforts.
“Then, too, the public schools, which were at that period the boast of
the South, in support of her contention of friendliness to the Negro,
served the purpose of quieting many a Negro who might otherwise have
been disposed to ‘talk too much.’[1] Be it remembered that at this
time it was considered virtually a social crime to employ a Negro as a
clerk in a store or elsewhere. This feeling extended from Delaware to
Texas, and the thousands of Negroes who were coming out of the various
public schools, and the institutions for higher training established
by Northern philanthropists, had practically no calling open to them,
as educated men and women, save that of teaching. The door of hope was
shut in their face and they were censured for not doing better under
such impossible handicaps. It was like closing the stable door and
whipping the horse for not going in! A few entered the professions of
law, pharmacy and medicine, some engaged in business, but no great
number for the following reasons:
“First--In the professions the white professional man was by habit
and custom very generally employed by the colored people, while the
colored professional man, by the conventional laws of society, was
rarely or never employed by white people.
“Second--The natural disposition of the colored people to patronize
white merchants and professional men in preference to their own was a
factor to be reckoned with in looking for the _causas rerum_--a kind of
one-sided arrangement whereby the whites got the Negroes’ money but the
Negroes could not get theirs--in the professions. In many of the small
lines of business, however, the Negro was patronized by the whites.
“So that--with the News Bureau making capital every morning of the
corruption in the race; with the efforts of Southern ministers who
had taken charge of Northern pulpits, to strew seeds of poison by
proclaiming, on the commission of every offense by a Negro, ‘We told
you that the Negro was not worth the freedom you gave him,’ ‘We told
you he wasn’t fit for citizenship and that the money you have spent for
his education is worse than wasted;’ with the constant assertions that
his only place is ‘behind a mule,’ that education made him a greater
criminal, that ‘the Southern people are his best friends’ because ‘we
overlook his follies’ and ‘treat him kindly if he will stay in his
place;’ with the money interests clamoring for the South ‘to be let
alone’ with the Negro question, for fear of unsettling business and
causing a slump in Southern securities; with the claims that, to keep
the railroads earning dividends, to keep the cotton market active, the
Negro must be handled according to the serfdom or shotgun plan, and
that the best task master so far found was the Southern white man, who
had proven himself wonderfully adept in getting good crops from Negro
labor--with these and many other excuses, the question of raising the
Negro in the scale of civilization was left to posterity.
“‘What is he worth to us now?’ That is the only question with which we
are concerned, was the ruling thought, if not the open confession.
“Let it be understood that statistics (which the Negro did not compile)
showed that the race at that time was, as a mass, the most illiterate,
the least thrifty, and the most shiftless and criminal of any class
of American citizens--dividing the population into natives--Irish
emigrants, German emigrants, Italians, Jews, and Poles. This was a
fact that hurt, regardless of who was responsible for it.
“Then the question of color cut no small figure in this problem. The
Negro’s color classified him; it rang the signal bell for drawing ‘the
color line’ as soon as he was seen, and it designated and pointed him
out as a marked man, belonging to that horrible criminal class whose
revolting deeds were revealed every day in the newspapers. No wonder
he was shunned, no wonder the children and women were afraid of him!
The great mass of the people took the newspaper reports as true.
They never read between the lines and seldom read the corrections of
errors[2] that had been made. In some cases the first report had been
that a Negro had committed a crime, and later it was discovered that
a white man with his face blacked had been the perpetrator. Some one
has said, ‘Let me write the songs of a people and I will control their
religious sentiments.’ In a country like America where the newspapers
are so plentiful and where people rely on them so implicitly, those who
control the newspapers may be said to control the views of the people
on almost any public question. With 30 per cent of the Negro population
illiterate, with a criminal record double that of any of the emigrant
classes above outlined, with the News Distributing Bureau against
it, with no political or social standing--pariahs in the land--with
Northern capital endorsing serfdom, with their inability to lose their
race identity, on account of their color--we realize how heavy the odds
were against the Negro race at that time.
“As a Negro orator once put it, ‘De Southern white man’s on top’er de
nigger and de Yankee white man’s on top er de Southern white man and de
bad nigger’s on top er dem bofe!’
“I now come to some of the proposed solutions of the problem. Various
meetings were held all over the country to discuss the Negro problem,
and many a mediocre white man who thirsted for a little newspaper
notoriety, or political preferment, in both the North and the South,
had his appetite in this direction satisfied by writing or saying
something on the Negro question. One Thomas Dixon tried to out Herod
Herod in taking up the exceptional cases of Negro criminality and using
them in an attempt to convince his readers of the Negro’s unfitness
for citizenship. A public speaker named John Temple Graves[3] made
lecture tours advocating deportation as the only solution of the
problem, rejecting as unsound the theories of Booker Washington, who
was advocating industrial education as the main factor in solving
the problem, because of the consequent clash that would arise between
white and colored mechanics--rejecting also as unsound the theory of
higher education; because that would develop in the Negro a longing for
equality which the white man would not give and was never known to
give an inferior race, a statement which all honest white people must
regard as a base slander upon their Christianity.
“Bishop Turner, senior bishop of the African Methodist-Episcopal
Church, one of the leading organizations of the Negro race, also
advocated emigration to Africa as the only solution of the problem, on
the grounds that the white people would never treat the Negro justly
and that history furnished no instance where a slave race had ever
become absolutely free in the land of its former owners, instancing
that to be free the Jews had to leave Egypt; that William the Conqueror
and his followers slaughtered the native Britons, rather than attempt
to carry out what seemed to them an impossible task, that of teaching
two races, a conquered race and a conquering one, to live side by side
in peace.
“One Professor Bassett made enemies of the Southern newspapers and
politicians by proposing _justice_ and _equality_ as a solution of the
problem. The ‘most unkindest cut of all’ of Professor Bassett’s saying
was that Booker Washington was ‘the greatest man, save Robert E.
Lee, that the South had produced in a hundred years.’ The politicians
and their sympathizers seized upon this statement as being a good
opportunity to keep up the discussion of the Negro issue, which many
better disposed people were hoping would be dropped, according to
promise, as soon as the Negroes had been deprived of the ballot by
the amendments then being added to the constitutions of the Southern
States. They rolled it over as a sweet morsel under their tongues.
‘Othello’s occupation,’ they realized, would be gone without the
‘nigger in the wood pile.’ The politicians disfranchised the Negro to
get rid of his vote, which was in their way, and they kept the Negro
scarecrow bolstered up for fear that the whites might divide and that
the Negro might then come back into possession of the ballot.
“The politicians proposed no measures of relief for the great mass
of ignorance and poverty in their midst. The modicum of school
appropriations was wrung from them, in some instances, by the threats
of the better element of the people. They were obstructionists rather
than constructionists. One Benjamin Tillman boasted on the floor of
the United States Senate that in his state he kept the Negroes ‘in
their place’ by the use of the shot-gun, in defiance of law and the
constitution, and that he expected to keep it up. If left alone, the
feeling against Negroes would have subsided to some extent and mutual
helpfulness prevailed, but the politicians had to have an issue,
even at the sacrifice of peace between the races and at the expense
of a loss of labor in many sections where it was once plentiful--as
many Negroes left for more liberal states, where they not only
received better wages but also better treatment. The Southern farmer
and business man was paying a dear price for office holders when he
stood by the politicians and allowed them to run off Negro labor, by
disfranchisement and political oppression. It was paying too much for a
whistle of that quality.
“Many Negroes thought, with Bishop Turner and John Temple Graves, that
emigration was the solution of the problem; not necessarily emigration
from the United States, but emigration individually to states where
public sentiment had not been wrought up against them. But the Negro,
owing to his ignorance, and also to his affection for the land of his
birth, and on account of a peculiar provincialism that narrowed his
scope of vision of the world and its opportunities, could not bring
himself to leave the South, so far as the great mass was concerned.
Then, too, he had been told that the Yankees would not treat him like
the Southerner, and Southern newspapers took especial pains to publish
full details of all the lynchings that occurred in the North and make
suggestive comments on them, in which they endeavored to show that the
whole country was down on the Negro, and that while in the South the
whites lynched only the one Negro against whom they had become enraged,
in the North they mobbed and sought to drive out _all_ the Negroes in
the community where the crime had been committed. (The two clippings
below occurred in the same issue of a Southern paper and showed how,
while the North was mobbing a Negro, the South was honoring one.)[4]
“Instances of white mechanics North who were refusing to work with
Negroes, and instances of Northern hotels refusing them shelter were
also made the most of and served the purpose of deterring Negro
emigration from the Southern States. Frequently some Negro was brought
home dead, or one who had contracted disease in the North came home
and died. These occurrences were also used as object lessons and had
their effect.
“In fact, the Southern white people did not want the Negroes to leave.
They wanted them as domestics, on the farm, and as mechanics. They knew
their value as such. ‘Be as intelligent, as capable as you may but
acknowledge my superiority,’ was the unspoken command.
“Many individual Negroes acted on this suggestion and by shrewd
foresight managed to accumulate considerable property, and so long as
they ‘minded their own business,’ and ‘stayed out of politics’ they did
well, and had strong personal friends among the white people. Their
property rights were recognized to a very large extent, in fact the
right of Negroes to hold property was very generally conceded. This was
true even to the extent, in several instances, of causing reimbursement
for those who were run away from their homes by mobs. In some states
laws were passed giving damages to the widows of those who were lynched
by mobs, said damages to be paid by the county in which the lynching
occurred. In fact the South had long since discovered the Negro’s
usefulness and the feeling against him partook more of political
persecution than race hatred. The paradoxical scheme of retaining six
million Negroes in the population with all the rights and duties of
citizenship, less social and political standing, was the onus of the
problem in the South. Such a scheme as this was bound to breed more or
less persecution and lawlessness, as did the slave system. It was a
makeshift at best, and though in the main, honestly undertaken, it was
impossible of performance.
“The Southern people seemed to have no objection to personal contact
with Negroes in a servile capacity. Many Negro women made their living
as ‘wet nurses,’ and the Southern ‘black mammy’ had become stereotyped.
Then, too, the large number of mulatto children everywhere was some
evidence of personal contact, on the part of the men. Negro servants
swarmed around the well-to-do Southern home, cooked the food and often
slept with the children; the Southerner shook hands with his servants
on his return home from a visit and was glad to see them; but if any
of these servants managed by industry and tact to rise to higher walks
of life, it became necessary, according to the unwritten law, to break
off close relations. Yet, in the great majority of cases, the interest
and good feeling remained, if the Negro did not become too active
politically--in which case he could expect ‘no quarter.’
“The subject of lynching became very serious. This evil custom, for a
while, seemed to threaten the whole nation. While Negroes were the most
common victims, yet the fever spread like a contagion to the lynching
of white criminals as well.
“At first it was confined to criminals who committed assaults on women,
and to brutal murderers, but it soon became customary to lynch for the
slightest offense, so that no man’s life was safe if he was unfortunate
enough to have had a difficulty with some individual, who had friends
enough to raise a mob at night who would go with him to the house of
his victim, call him out, and either shoot, or unmercifully beat him.
The refusal of the officers of the law to crush out this spirit in its
embryonic stage resulted in its growing to such enormous proportions
that they found, too late, that they could neither manage nor control
it. The officers themselves were afraid of the lynchers.
“The method of lynching Negroes was usually by hanging or by burning
at the stake, sometimes in the presence of thousands of people, who
came in on excursion trains to see the sight, and, possibly, carry
off a trophy consisting of a finger joint, a tooth or a portion of
the victim’s heart. If the lynching was for a crime committed against
a woman, and she could be secured, she was consigned to the task of
starting the flames with her own hands. This was supposed to add to the
novelty of the occasion.[5]
“‘Why did not the Negro offer some resistance to these outrages?’ you
may ask.
“That question, no doubt, is often propounded by those who read of the
horrors of this particular period. Different theories are advanced.
One is that the Negro was overawed by numbers and resources--that he
saw the uselessness of any such attempt. Another theory is that during
the whole history of Negro slavery in this country there occurred only
one or two rebellions worthy of the name. One was the ‘Nat Turner
Insurrection’ in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. This was
soon put down and the ringleader hung, together with several of his
misguided followers. So it must be concluded, since the Negro bore
two hundred and fifty years of slavery so patiently, and made only a
few feeble attempts to liberate himself, that he is not naturally of
a rebellious nature--that he easily fits into any place you put him,
and with the fatalistic tendency of all barbaric races, except the
Indian, makes the best of circumstances. It is possibly true that the
Negro would be a slave among us to-day if some one else had not freed
him. The sentiment, ‘He who would be free must first himself strike the
blow,’ did not appeal to him.
“Another reason cited for the Negro’s submission so long to oppression
both before and since the American Civil War of 1860 to 1865 was his
inability to organize. The white man learned this art by thousands of
years of experience and of necessary resistance for the protection of
those rights which he holds most dear. The Negroes were never able
to make any concerted movement in their own behalf. They clashed too
easily with one another and any individual would swamp the ship, as it
were, to further his own scheme. The ‘rule or ruin’ policy prevailed
and the necessity of the subordination of individuality for the good of
the whole was lost in a storm of personal aggrandizement whenever an
attempt was made at anything bordering on Negro national organization.
This was one of the fruits of slavery, which encouraged jealousy
and bickering. Several religious organizations had a successful
existence for some time and quite a number of business and benevolent
enterprises, but in politics all was chaos. The Negroes cast their
ballots one way all of the time; it was known just as well ten years
before an election how they would vote, as it was after the ballots
were counted. No people of political calibre like that could measure
arms with the white man politically; his rebelling in such a condition
would have been preposterous. The Negro took his cue in matters of race
policy from his white friends--he did not fight until the signal was
given by them. No Negro gained any national reputation without first
having been recognized by the white race, instead of his own. The
Negroes recognized their leaders after the whites picked them out--not
before.
“The Negro nature at this time was still a pliable one, after many
years of drill training, but it was much more plastic in the days
of slavery, and for the first forty years after reconstruction. The
master labored to subordinate the will of the slave to his own, to
make him like clay in the hands of the potter. In this he had an eye
to business. The nearer the slave approached the horse, in following
his master’s guidance, the nearer perfect he was, and this lesson of
putting himself absolutely at the mercy of his master was thoroughly
learned, and it was learned easily because there seemed to exist a
natural instinctive awe on the part of the Negro for the white man. He
had that peculiar fondness for him that the mule has for the horse. You
can mount one horse and lead a thousand mules, without bit or bridle,
to the ends of the earth.
“The Negro sought to please his master in all things. He had a smile
for his frowns and a grin for his kicks. No task was too menial, if
done for a white master--he would dance if he was called upon and make
sport of the other Negroes, and even pray, if need be, so he could
laugh at him. He was trustworthy to the letter, and while occasionally
he might help himself to his master’s property on the theory of a
common ownership, yet woe be unto the other Negro that he caught
tampering with his master’s goods! He was a ‘tattler’ to perfection,
a born dissembler--a diplomat and a philosopher combined. He was
past grand master in the art of carrying his point when he wanted a
‘quarter’ or fifty cents. He knew the route to his master’s heart and
pocketbook and traveled it often. He simply made himself so obliging
that he could not be refused! It was this characteristic that won
him favor in the country from college president down to the lowest
scullion. Had he been resentful and vindictive, like the Indian, he
would have been deported or exterminated long since.
“The Negro’s usefulness had also bound him to the South. The affection
that the master and mistress had for the slave was transmitted in the
blood of their children.
“As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other,”
applied to the relations between the Negro and his white master. In the
Civil War between the states, many a slave followed his master to the
front. Here he was often the only messenger to return home. He bore the
treasured watch, or ring, or sword, of the fallen soldier, and broke
the sad news to the family; and there were black tears as well as white
ones spilled on such occasions.
“The white males went to the war leaving the family and farm in charge
of the blacks thereon. They managed everything, plowed, sowed, reaped,
and sold, and turned over all returns to the mistress. They shared her
sorrows and were her protection. When Union soldiers came near, the
trusted blacks were diligent in hiding property from the thieves and
bummers of the army. They carried the horses to the woods and hid them
in the densest swamps, they buried the jewelry and silver and gold
plate; they secreted their young mistresses and the members of the
family where they could not be found, and not one instance was there
ever heard of improper conduct, out of a population of nearly four
million slaves; in spite of the fact that the war was being maintained
by their masters for the perpetuation of the shackles of slavery on
themselves! The Negro was too fond of his master’s family to mistreat
them, he felt almost a kinship to them. The brutes of later days came
from that class of Negroes who had been isolated from the whites, on
the quarters of large plantations.
“Was there ever a more glorious record? Did ever a race deserve more
fully the affection of another race than these southern Negroes,
and did not we owe it to their descendants to save them from both
deportation and serfdom?
“You ask, ‘Why was it that after the war there was so much race
prejudice, in the face of all these facts?’
“The answer to that question is fraught with much weight and bears
strongly on the final solution of the Negro problem. The friends of
the Negro had this question to battle with from the beginning, for the
enemies of the race used every weapon at hand in the long and terrible
fight against Negro citizenship.
“To begin with, I will state that after the war the Negro became a
free citizen and a voter--he was under no restraint. His new condition
gave him privileges that he had never had before; it was not unnatural
that he should desire to exercise them. His attempts to do so were
resisted by the native whites, but his vote was needed by the white
men who had recently come into the South to make it their home--and
to get office--and also for his own protection. It was necessary that
he should vote to save himself from many of the harsh laws that were
being proposed at the time. Some of them were that a Negro should not
own land, that a Negro’s testimony was incompetent in the courts, that
a Negro should not keep firearms for his defense, that he should not
engage in business without paying a high and almost prohibitive tax,
that he must hire himself out on a farm in January or be sold to the
highest bidder for a year, the former owner to have the preference in
bidding.
“These laws were unwisely urged by those whites who did not desire to
accept the consequences of the war. To make the laws effective, it was
thought necessary by their advocates to suppress the Negro voters; for,
if they were allowed to vote, there were so many of them, and so many
of the whites had been disfranchised because of participation in the
war, that defeat was certain. Here is where the bitterness, which for
a long time seemed to curse our country, had its origin. The Negroes
and their friends were lined up on one side and their opponents on the
other.
“The ‘Ku Klux Klan’ was a secret organization whose purpose was to
frighten and intimidate Negroes and thus prevent their voting. It
had branch organizations in the different Southern states during
the reconstruction period. When the members went out on raids, they
wore disguises; some had false heads with horns and long beards,
some represented his satanic majesty, some wore long gowns, others
wrapped themselves in sheets of different colors, and all sorts
of hideous shapes and forms, with masks representing the heads of
different animals, such as goats, cows and mules. They proceeded on
the principle of using mild means first, but when that failed, they
did not hesitate to resort to harsher methods. The object seemed to be
only to so frighten Negroes that they would not attempt to vote. But
in carrying out this scheme they often met resistance, whereupon many
outrages were perpetrated upon people who made a stand for their rights
under the law of the land. In obstinate cases and toward the end of
their careers “klans” would visit Negro cabins at night and terrify
the inmates by whipping them, hanging them up by their thumbs, and
sometimes killing them. Many Negroes who assumed to lead among their
people were run from one county into another. Some were run out of
their states, and even white men who led the Negroes in thickly settled
Negro counties were driven out.
“The story was told of one case where a white man named Stephens, the
recognized political leader of the Negroes as well as a few whites,
in one of the states, was invited into one of the lower rooms of the
courthouse of his county while a political meeting by his opponents was
in progress above, and there told he must agree to leave the county
and quit politics or be killed then and there. He refused to do
either, whereupon two physicians, with others who were present, tied
him, laid him on a table and opened his jugular veins and bled him to
death in buckets provided for the occasion. Meanwhile the stamping
of feet and the yelling above, where the speaking was going on, was
tremendous, being prearranged to deaden any outcry that he might make.
It is said that Stephens’s last words before he was put on the table
were a request that he might go to the window and take a final look
at his home, which was only a few rods away. This was granted, and
as he looked his wife passed out of the house and his children were
playing in the yard. Stephens’s dead body was found by a Negro man who
suspected something wrong and climbed to the window of the room in
search for him.
“Such acts as these spread terror among the Negro population, as well
as bad feeling, and dug a wide political pit between the Negro and the
Democratic party which organized these methods of intimidation.[6] The
‘Ku Klux Klan’ was finally annihilated by the strong hand of President
Grant, who filled the South with sufficient militia to suppress it.
A favorite means of evading the arrests made by the militia was to
have the prisoners released on _habeas corpus_ by the native judges.
To stop this the writ of _habeas corpus_ was suspended by some of the
provisional governors. One governor who did this was impeached by the
Democratic party when it returned to power and he died broken hearted,
without the removal of his disabilities. You can easily see from
these facts how the political differences between the Negro and the
Democratic party arose.”
Here my paper ended. When I had read it over to Dr. Newell, he rose and
went over to his desk, saying,
“While looking over some old papers belonging to my grandfather, I
found the following article inside of an old book. On it is a statement
that it was written in the year 1902 and republished in 1950. I have
often desired to get at the true status of this question, and when I
found this my interest was doubly aroused. The so-called Negro problem
was truly a most crucial test of the foundation principles of our
government a century ago, and I feel proud of my citizenship in so
great a country when I reflect that we have come through it all with
honor and that finally truth has won out and we are able at last to
treat the Negro with justice and humanity, according to the principles
of Christianity! This problem tested our faith as with fire.”
He handed me the article, and gave his attention to other matters until
I had read it:--
“RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO GOVERNMENT.
“In the ten years culminating with the decade ending in 1902, the
American Negroes have witnessed well nigh their every civil right
invaded. They commenced the struggle as freemen in 1865; at the close
of the civil war both races in the South began life anew, under changed
conditions--neither one the slave of the other, except in so far as he
who toils, as Carlyle says, is slave to him who thinks. Under the slave
system the white man had been the thinker and the Negro the toiler. The
idea that governed both master and slave was that the slave should have
no will but that of his master.
“The fruits of this system began to ripen in the first years of
freedom, when the Negro was _forced_ to think for himself. For two
hundred and forty years his education and training had been directed
towards the suppression of his will. He was fast becoming an automaton.
He was taught religion to some extent, but a thoughtless religion
is little better than mockery and this it must have been when even
to read the Bible in some states was a crime. It is, therefore, not
surprising that freedom’s new suit fitted the recently emancipated
slave uncomfortably close; he hardly knew which way to turn for fear he
would rend a seam. Consultation with his former owners was his natural
recourse in adjusting himself to new conditions.
“In North Carolina a meeting was called at the capital of the state
by the leading colored men, and their former masters, and the leading
white men were invited to come forward, to take the lead and to tell
them what was best for them to do. It is a lamentable fact that the
thinking white men did not embrace this opportunity to save their
state hundreds of lives that were afterwards sacrificed during
reconstruction. Many other evils of the period, might have been thus
averted. It was a fatal blunder that cost much in money and blood, and,
so far as North Carolina is concerned, if the Negroes in reconstruction
were misled it was the fault of those who were invited and refused
this opportunity to take hold and direct them properly.
“The Negro, turned from the Southern white man’s refusal, followed such
leaders as he could find. In some instances these proved to be corrupt
camp followers, in others ambitious and unscrupulous Southern men who
made the Negroes stepping stones to power or pelf. The Negroes of the
state received very little of the honor or harvest of reconstruction,
but very much of dishonor, and they are now charged with the sins both
of omission and commission of that period. A pliant tool he may have
been in the hands of demagogues, yet in the beginning he sought the
leadership of wise men. In this he showed a noble purpose which at
least relieves him--whatever was charged to his account afterwards--of
the charge of malicious intent.
“Here is a list of prominent white leaders in North Carolina who
controlled the ship of state for the first ten years after the war,
from 1869 to 1876:
“Wm. E. Rodman (Southern white), Judge Dick (Southern white), W. W.
Holden, Governor (Southern white), Byron Baffin (Southern white),
Henry Martindale (Ohio white), Gen’l Ames (Northern), G. Z. French,
legislator (Maine), Dr. Eugene Grissom, Superintendent Insane Asylum
Raleigh, North Carolina (Southern white), Tyre York, legislator and
party leader (Southern white), Governor Graham (Southern white), Judge
Brooks (Southern white), S. J. Carrow (Southern white).
“This list shows that those who had the reins of government in hand
were not Negroes. The truth is, that if the team went wrong the fault
was that of the white drivers and not that of the Negro passengers who,
to say the most, had only a back seat in the wagon of state.
“But the enemies of Negro suffrage and advocates of the mistakes of
reconstruction avow that the sway of reconstruction demagoguery could
never have prevailed but for Negro suffrage; that had the Negro not
been a voter he could never have been made the tool of demagogues.
This is obvious but the argument is sufficiently met by the fact that
the Negroes offered the brain and culture of the South the opportunity
of taking charge of affairs. Instead of doing so they stiffened their
necks against Negro suffrage, the Howard Amendment, and the other
propositions of the government at Washington, looking towards the
reconstruction of the lately seceded states. If there had been less
resistance there would have been less friction, but the South had its
own ideas of how the thing should be done and resisted any others
to the point of a revolution which had to be put down by government
troops. The government’s plans were carried finally at the point of the
bayonet, when they might have gone through smoothly, had the Negro’s
call for Southern leadership been heeded. Had this been done, the
‘Ku-Klux’ would never have developed. The South came back into the
Union, ‘overpowered,’ it said, ‘but not conquered.’ So far as the Negro
question is concerned that is true but in other matters the South is
essentially loyal. Although it came back pledged never to deprive any
citizen of his rights and privileges ‘on account of color or previous
condition of servitude,’ it is now engaged in a bold and boasting
attempt to do this very thing. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South
Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia have all adopted amendments
to their constitutions which practically nullify the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which the
honor of these states was pledged not to do when they were re-admitted
into the Union at the close of the war of secession! In Virginia
the amendment was established without submitting the question to the
popular vote. To secure these amendments in other states, fraud and
intimidation is alleged to have been used, and the Southern states that
have not amended their constitutions have effected the same results by
a system of political jugglery with the Negro’s ballots.
“The Southern states seem to live in mortal dread of the Negro with
a ballot. They imagine a Pandora’s box of evils will open upon them
if the Negro is allowed to vote. This feeling arises more from the
fact that the whites want the offices than from any other cause. Past
experience shows that Negroes have never attempted to claim all of the
offices, even where they did ninety-nine per cent. of the voting. It is
a notable fact that in North Carolina during the reconstruction times,
when few white men voted and Negroes had a monopoly of the ballot, that
white men were put forward for official positions. The same condition
existed in the period from 1894 to 1898, during the ‘Fusion Movement,’
when out of ninety-six counties, each of which had three commissioners
elected by the people, only four counties out of the ninety-six had
a Negro commissioner; and the commissioners in two-thirds of the
counties were elected principally by Negro votes--in many of the
eastern counties, almost wholly by them. Out of ninety-six counties the
Negroes never demanded a single sheriff or a mayor of a city, town or
village. There were a few Negro magistrates in the eastern counties,
but always more white ones near by and under a provision of a North
Carolina statute any defendant who thinks he cannot get justice before
the magistrate in whose court he is summoned for trial, can have his
case moved to some other justice.
“The evils of reconstruction were due to the general demoralization
which followed the Civil War, rather than to the Negro. War is ‘hell’
and so is its aftermath.
“Another pet assertion of the opponents of Negro suffrage is that
Negro government is expensive. Those who despair of reaching the
American conscience in any other way hope to do so through the pocket
argument, commercialism if you please. This argument, like the others,
has no facts for a basis. It is a phantom, a delusion and is intended
to affect the business element of the North, which people sometimes
mistakenly think has more respect for prices than principles. It will
not do, however, to listen to the siren of commercialism whose songs
are composed by advocates of Negro disfranchisement. There is method in
the spell she would bring upon you, and her story is literally nothing
but a song.
“The truth is that during the whole period of the ‘Fusion Movement’
North Carolina never had a more economical government--taxes then were
93c. on a hundred dollar valuation; taxes now are $1.23. North Carolina
six per cent. bonds then sold for $1.10; they now sell for $1.09.
The Fusion government made the state penitentiary self-supporting;
the white supremacy government has run it into debt to the amount of
$50,000. Under the Fusion government, most of the counties paid off
their debts and had a surplus in their treasuries for the first time
since the war. Under the Fusion government more miles of railroad
were built than in any period of the same length before or since,
more cotton factories were established; one of them being owned and
operated by Negroes. A silk mill operated entirely by Negro labor, from
foremen down, was also established. The fees of public officers were
cut down about one-third. These are some of the phases of the Fusion
government--a government based almost entirely on Negro votes--that the
enemies of Negro suffrage do not discuss.
“It is useless to refer to the period of reconstruction to disprove
the theory that Negro suffrage would entail an expensive government
on the South, when we have the recent experiment in North Carolina
before us. For the sake of argument, we might admit that the Negro was
unfit for suffrage forty years ago, but that by no means proves that
he is unfit now. Forty years of experience under American institutions
have taught him many lessons. He is no longer the ‘child-man,’ as the
white supremacy advocates call him. These people are as false in their
theories as were the pro-slavery advocates who maintained the absurd
proposition that if the Negro was emancipated he would soon perish,
for want of sufficient ability to feed and clothe himself. Forty years
after emancipation--about as long as Moses was in the wilderness--in
spite of these false prophecies, we can now find some of the sons
of the prophets fearing and foretelling, not that the Negroes will
perish, but that they will outstrip them in the race of life! So the
white man in the new constitution is to be allowed to vote on his
‘grand-daddy’s’[7] merits and the Negro must vote on his own.
“These politicians were afraid to base the right to vote on merit, as
they feared the Negro would win.[8] Among these people a Negro has to
be twice as smart as a white man to merit the same favors, yet in
a recent Civil Service examination in Atlanta 19 Negroes out of 40
passed, while only 26 whites out of 115 succeeded. In an examination
of law students by the Supreme Court of North Carolina only 40 per
cent. of the whites passed, while 100 per cent. of the colored got
licenses. A hundred other illustrations might be made showing the
speciousness of the arguments put forth as to Negro incompetency.
The fact is that there is no use in arguing such a proposition. The
effort made to suppress the Negro has no just basis. There has simply
been a determination to _do it_, right or wrong. The advocates of
white supremacy who watch the current of events, have seen that the
decitizenization of the Negro can be accomplished with the shot-gun,
without trouble to themselves, and they have accomplished the task.
They have asked to be let alone with the Negro problem; they _have_
been let alone since 1876, when the Republican party dropped the Negro
question as an issue. Since that time they have been politically
tying the Negroes’ hands. Realizing his industrial usefulness, the aim
has been to eliminate him from politics and at the same time use him
as a tax-payer and a producer. The paradoxical task of defining his
citizenship as that of one with all the burdens and duties, less the
rights and privileges thereof, has been quite successfully performed.
“The white supremacy advocates seem to have selected a propitious
period for this work--a time when the Negro’s friends in the Republican
party are occupied with similar problems in Cuba and the Philippines.
‘If the Republicans deny self-government to the Philippines, Porto Rico
and Cuba,’ inquire the Southerners, ‘why haven’t we the right to do
the same to Negroes? Why allow Negroes in the South to rule and deny
the same to Negroes in Hawaii?’ are questions they are asking with
some force. Whatever else the advocates of white supremacy may lack
they are not lacking in shrewdness. Their disfranchising schemes have
flaunted themselves under the very nose of the government, and bid it
defiance in the National Senate with unmistakable boldness, since the
Spanish-American War and the policy growing out of it. However there
seems to be a man in the White House who wants to set no example that
white supremacy can follow; so far as his indicated policy in dealing
with Cuba was concerned, President Roosevelt determined that the black
people of Cuba should be free.
“But the subordination of the Negro cannot last, there will always be
white people in this country who will believe in his equality before
the law. These principles are too firmly entrenched in the hearts of
Americans to be utterly subverted. They are the bed rock on which the
government was founded--on which the Civil War was maintained. Too
much of blood and treasure has been spent now to go backwards. These
principles have been established at too great a cost to abandon them
so soon. It is true that the white supremacy advocates seem now in
control of the situation, but that also seemed true of the advocates
of slavery before the war. While the enemies of liberty have always
been cunning, yet like all other advocates of false doctrines who get
power, they usually abuse it; the South might have held her slaves for
many years longer, had she not overstepped the mark by trying to force
the institution on the North. She attempted to extend slavery into new
territories, she even attempted to capture her slaves in the streets
of anti-slavery cities like Boston, by the Fugitive Slave Law--under
the very noses of the abolitionists! Had the pro-slavery people been
satisfied with restricted slavery, the abolitionists might have had
harder work in dethroning the institution.
“If the question of lynching had been confined to Negroes guilty of
assaults on females some justification might exist, but it has been
extended to all crimes; and not satisfied with hanging, burning by slow
fire has been substituted, accompanied by stabbing, the cutting off of
finger joints, the digging out of eyes, and other torture.
“On the question of civil equality, the ‘Jim-crow’ system has not
sufficed; like the horse leech, they continually call for more. If
practiced only in the South it might stand, but an attempt has been
made to cover the country, and the President himself must not treat
a colored gentleman otherwise than as a scullion--according to the
advocates of white supremacy. In their doctrine _all_ Negroes are to be
humiliated. This tendency to dictate to others and go to extremes is
characteristic, and it means that we may always depend on this class of
individuals to go too far, and by over-stepping the mark to turn the
country against them.
“If a fool has rope enough the end is easy to see.”
* * * * *
After reading the article, I turned to the Doctor, and said, “These
statements are essentially correct, according to my recollection of
those times, and I will say further that there were grave doubts one
hundred years ago as to the permanency of our institutions under
the strain of the Negro problem; and no less prominent was the
labor agitation or the war between capital and labor. It is a happy
realization for me to return to my country and find these questions
peaceably adjusted and that the South, which was for a long time
considered obdurate on this subject, has led in bringing about this
happy solution, in spite of the prophecies of many writers like this
one. But the problem I have been laboring with ever since my second
advent, as it were, is, how was it all done?
“Well, we Southern people changed our leaders. We took men of noble
character; men who appealed to reason and humanity, rather than
pandered to the lowest passions of the people,” he said.
“Tell me, Dr. Newell, how the labor question was settled and how the
labor unions learned to leave off discriminating against Negroes.
According to my best recollections the American labor organizations,
almost without exception, excluded Negro members.”
“Yes,” replied Dr. Newell, “that is correct, as I have gleaned from
the history of your times, but--as all injustice must--this particular
instance followed the fixed rule and finally gave way to truth. Such
discriminations were incompatible with the spirit and trend of our
government. The labor leaders, however, yielded in the end more from a
sense of necessity than of justice to the Negro. As Lincoln said, the
nation could not exist half slave and half free, and as Blaine said, in
his famous Augusta speech, no imaginary line could continue to divide
free labor from serf labor. The labor leaders found, after serious
second thought, that it would be better to emancipate Negro labor than
to lend their efforts towards keeping it in serfdom. For a long time
the labor organizations desired the Negroes deported, as a solution
of the problem for themselves alone. They found various influences,
especially capital, opposed to this; as one writer put it, ‘the Dollar
was no respecter of persons and would as soon hop into the hands of
a black man, in consideration of the performance of a service, as in
those of a white one.’ Capital wanted the work done and the man who
could do it the cheapest and best was the man that got the Dollar every
time. This phase of the question was a constant menace to organized
labor, and finally caused a revolution in its tactics. White labor
began to see that it would be better to lift the Negro up to the same
scale with itself, by admitting him into their organization, than to
seek his debasement. If Negroes were in a condition to work for fifty
cents per day and would do so, and capital would employ them, then
white men must accept the same terms or get no work! This, followed to
its last analysis, meant that white laborers must provide for their
families and educate their children on fifty cents per day, if the
Negroes could do it.”
“Did not the South object to the organization of Negro labor?” I asked.
“The Southern people, at first, strongly objected.
“The laboring white people of the South have made serious blunders in
their position on the Negro problem, having acted all along on the
presumption that the proper solution was to ‘keep the Negro down.’
Towards this end, they bent their best energies, under the mistaken
idea of conserving their own interests, not realizing the all-important
fact that as long as there was a large number of Negroes in their
midst who would work for only fifty cents per day as above stated, and
capital was disposed to employ them, just so long would every laboring
white man have to accept the same wages as the Negro.
“The intelligent solution of the problem was found by making the Negro
see what his interests were, by taking him into the labor unions, where
he could be educated up to an intelligent appreciation of the value of
his labor; instead of seeking further to degrade him by oppression,
with the consequent result of lowering the white man’s scale of wages.
Further it has been found that oppression does not oppress when aimed
at the Negro--he rather thrives under it. In those communities where
he was most oppressed and the hand of every laboring white man seemed
to be against him, the Negro thrived and prospered to a marked degree.
Oppression simply drives negroes together, they concentrate their trade
in their own stores and spend their wages among themselves to a greater
extent than otherwise--and thus it more often than otherwise happened,
that Negro laborers as a mass, in such communities, lived in better
homes, and educated their children better than the white laborers. The
eyes of the Southern white laboring men began to see this point and a
change of base took place, and now they are and have been for a long
time, seeking to elevate the Negro laborer to their own standard to
keep him from pulling them down--a most intelligent view of the matter!
“The South had congratulated itself on being free from the strikes and
lock-outs caused by organized labor in the North. Their contention
was that the Negroes could not act intelligently in any organization,
and that serious consequences would certainly follow. But all such
predictions failed to materialize after the Negroes were organized. The
work of organizing did not stop with their admission into labor unions
but courses of instruction were mapped out and competent people were
employed to drill the members in the principles of the order; and, so
far as possible, in the advanced methods of handling tools. The result
was the creation of a much better class of workmen, better wages and
better living for all.
“The unions also opened their doors to women in separate meetings.
Schools of Domestic Science were established and those who employed
servants soon found that they could leave the household and kitchen
work to a master-hand. The wives and mothers of employers were
emancipated from constantly ‘overseeing.’ There was a vast difference
between the professional domestic servant, who needed only orders,
which would be carried out faithfully, and the ‘blunderbuss,’ who was
continually at sea in the absence of the directing hand and mind of her
mistress. The Southern people began to recognize the difference, and
soon became the firm champions of the new system, and welcomed the new
efforts of the labor unions as a blessing rather than a curse.”
“But, Doctor, am I to understand that there are no labor problems at
all in the country at present?”
“No, not exactly that; organized labor still has its problems, but you
must remember that they are not of the same character as those of a
hundred years ago. The essentials of life, such as coal, iron, oil and
other natural products are now handled by the National Government, and
the government is pledged to see to it that labor in the production of
these commodities is paid a fair share of the surplus accruing from
sales. No attempt at profit is allowed; the management is similar to
that of the Post Office Department, which has been conducted from the
beginning for the convenience of the people, and not for revenue to
the Government. The workmen are paid well and the cost to the consumer
is lessened by discarding the profits that formerly went into private
purses. We have no more strikes and lock-outs; the chief concern of the
labor unions now is to raise their less skillful members to a higher
standard (for a long time this effort was especially directed toward
the Negro members), and to assist those who, because of infirmity and
disease, find themselves incapacitated for further service. It may
be well said that the problem of ‘wherewithal shall we be clothed’
is solved in this country, so far as organized labor is concerned,
and more time is now left for the perfection of skill and individual
improvement.”
“A delightful situation, as compared with the past as I recollect it to
be,” I remarked--“when labor was paid barely enough to live on, while
enormous wealth was being accumulated in the hands of a few fortunate
people who happened to be born into opportunities--or, better still,
born rich.
“As I remember the past, the laboring people in coal and iron mines
earned barely enough for subsistence and their hours of toil were so
long that anything like self-improvement was impossible. They were in a
continual row with their employers, who revelled in luxury and rebelled
against a 10 per cent. increase in wages, and who in many instances,
rather than pay it, would close down the mines until their workmen
were starved into submission. I never could reconcile myself to the
logic of the principle that it was lawful for capital to thus oppress
labor. I think the legal maxim of _sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas_
(so use your own as not to injure another) applies with force in this
instance. The application of it is usually made in suits for damages,
where one person has injured another by negligence. But the force of
the maxim is applicable to capital as well, and he who would use money
(though in fact it be _legally_ his own) to oppress others has violated
both the letter and spirit of the maxim. In saying this I would not be
understood as indulging in that sickly sentimentality which despises
all rich people simply because they are rich, but rather to condemn
the illegitimate use of riches. A rich man can be a blessing as well
as a curse to his community, and I am indeed happy to learn and see
for myself that this is now the rule, rather than the exception, as
formerly.
“There is another phase of the question that you have not yet referred
to. What is the condition of the farm laborers of the Southern States?”
I asked. “When I left they were working from sunrise to sunset, the men
earning fifty cents and the women thirty-five cents per day, and they
lived in huts with mud chimneys--often a family of six or eight in one
room. They had a three months’ school during the winter season, when
there were no crops, and these were not too often taught by skilled
teachers. Has their condition improved so that it is in keeping with
the times?”
At this juncture the Doctor was called out of the room before he could
reply.
While waiting for him to return, I had a surprise. His private
secretary came in and seated himself at a phonographic typewriter
which took down the words in shorthand, typewrote them on a sheet for
preservation in the office, and at the same time sent the letter by
telephone to its destination. But my surprise was awakened by the fact
that this private secretary was a Negro; not full black, but mixed
blood--in color, between an Indian and a Chinaman. I ascertained
from this young man that it was now “quite common” for Southern white
men of large affairs to employ Negroes for higher positions in their
offices, counting rooms, and stores. (They had a precedent for this
in the custom of the Romans, who used their educated Greek slaves in
this way.) He also told me that the matter of social equality was not
mentioned. He naturally associated with his own people. He simply
wanted to do his work faithfully, and neither expected nor asked to sit
by his employer’s fireside. In a word, he showed that to give the Negro
an education need not necessarily “turn his head.”[9]
The young man said, “Our theory has kept the two races pure and has
developed both the Saxon and the Negro types and preserved the best
traits of each.”
I noticed that the subdued look of the old time Negro was absent and
that, without any attempt at display, this man possessed “_le grande
air_” which is a coveted attribute in the highest walks of life. I
had already observed that an advance in civilization produced more
individuality and more personal freedom in choosing one’s associates.
It was not expected that a man was the social equal of another because
he worked at the same bench with him, or rode in the same car on the
railroad. That was now considered the postulate of an ignoramus.
Individuality is a marked development of advanced civilization--of this
I have always been aware, the more so since witnessing the changes
wrought during my absence. Individuality gives room for thought, out
of which is born invention and progress. When the individual is not
allowed to separate from the crowd in thought and action, the aggregate
will, the aggregate thought, is his master and he “dare not venture for
fear of a fall.” Progress is measured only by the degree of swiftness
made by the mass. Some individuals may be able to make better speed,
but the mass holds them back. Four horses are pulling a load; two may
be able to go faster than the others, but the speed of the team is
measured by the speed of the slowest horse.
This does not always appear apropos of the progress of communities, for
a community may be led by a few progressive spirits who seem to reflect
upon it their own standard and tone, but the less progressive members
of such a community have merely subordinated their wills for the time
being and may on any occasion see fit to exercise them; and at this
point the illustration becomes true again.
“Now,” said Doctor Newell, on his return, “I am sorry our conversation
was interrupted, but let us proceed. I believe you desired to ask me
some questions about the Negro farm laborers, did you not?”
I replied that I did, and recalled my statement as to their condition
when I last knew of them.
“Oh, it is very different from that now, Mr. Twitchell. Many changes;
many, many, have occurred! You will recall that, about the time you
left, the different Southern states were re-reconstructing themselves,
as it were, by making amendments to their constitutions which virtually
disfranchised a large proportion of the Negro voters--enough to put
the offices of the states absolutely into the hands of white men, as
outlined in the magazine article you have just read, and as you stated
in your brochure for the Bureau of Public Utility. Some passages from
a book I have on the subject may remind you of the discussion of this
question that was going on then.”
Signifying to his secretary what he wanted, he read to me the following
excerpts from the history of those times:
“NEGRO DISFRANCHISEMENT
“WHAT DR. F. A. NOBLE THINKS
“In civil as in business affairs there is nothing so foolish as
injustice and oppression; there is nothing so wise as righteousness. By
the letter of the amended Constitution, by the spirit and aim of the
amendments, and by all the principles of our American democracy, the
Negro is in possession of the elective franchise. Men differ in their
views as to whether it was good policy to confer this right upon him
at the time and in the way, and especially to the extent to which it
was done; but the right was conferred, and it is now his. To deprive
him of this right, for no other reason than that he is a Negro, is to
nullify the fundamental law of the land, discredit one of the most
sacred results of Emancipation, and flaunt contempt in the face of
the idea of a government of the people and by the people and for the
people. To discourage the Negro from attempting to exercise the right
of the ballot is to belittle him in his own estimation, put him at a
serious disadvantage in the estimation of others, and by so much remand
him back to the old condition of servitude from which he was rescued at
such cost to the nation. Wrong done to the colored race involves the
white race in the catastrophe which must follow. To withhold justice is
worse than to suffer injustice. A people deprived of their rights by
the state will not long be faithful to their duties to the state.
“WHAT HON. CARL SCHURZ THINKS
“That the suppression of the Negro franchise by direct or indirect
means is in contravention of the spirit and intent of the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States hardly admits of
doubt. The evident intent of the Constitution is that the colored
people shall have the right of suffrage on an equal footing with the
white people. The intent of the provisions of the State Constitutions
in question, as avowed by many Southern men, is that the colored people
shall not vote. However plausible it may be demonstrated by ingenious
argument that the provisions in the State Constitutions are not in
conflict with the National Constitution, or that if they were their
purpose could not be effectively thwarted by judicial decisions, yet
it remains true that by many, if not by all, of their authors they
were expressly designed to defeat the universally known and recognized
intent of a provision of the national Constitution. * * *
“The only plausible reason given for that curtailment of their rights
is that it is not in the interest of the Southern whites to permit
the blacks to vote. I will not discuss here the moral aspect of the
question whether A may deprive B of his rights if A thinks it in his
own interest to do so, and the further question, whether the general
admission of such a principle would not banish justice from the
earth and eventually carry human society back into barbarism. I will
rather discuss the question whether under existing circumstances it
would really be the true interest of the Southern whites generally to
disfranchise the colored people. * * *
“Negro suffrage is plausibly objected to on the ground that the great
bulk of the colored population of the South are very ignorant. This is
true. But the same is true of a large portion of the white population.
If the suffrage is dangerous in the hands of certain voters on account
of their ignorance, it is as dangerous in the hands of ignorant whites
as in the hands of ignorant blacks. To remedy this two things might be
done: To establish an educational test for admission to the suffrage,
excluding illiterates; and, secondly, to provide for systems of public
instruction so as to gradually do away with illiteracy--subjecting
whites and blacks alike to the same restrictions and opening to them
the same opportunities. * * *
“But most significant and of evil augury is the fact that with many of
the Southern whites a well-educated colored voter is as objectionable
as an ignorant one, or even more objectionable, simply on account of
his color. It is, therefore, not mere dread of ignorance in the voting
body that arouses the Southern whites against the colored voters. It
is race antagonism, and that race antagonism presents a problem more
complicated and perplexing than most others, because it is apt to be
unreasoning. It creates violent impulses which refuse to be argued with.
“The race antipathy now heating the Southern mind threatens again to
curtail the freedom of inquiry and discussion there--perhaps not to
the same extent, but sufficiently to produce infinite mischief by
preventing an open-minded consideration of one of the most important
interests. * * * And here is the crucial point: _There will be
a movement either in the direction of reducing the Negroes to a
permanent condition of serfdom--the condition of the mere plantation
hand, ‘alongside of the mule,’ practically without any rights of
citizenship--or a movement in the direction of recognizing him as a
citizen in the true sense of the term. One or the other will prevail._
“That there are in the South strenuous advocates of the establishment
of some sort of semi-slavery cannot be denied. Governor Vardaman,
of Mississippi, is their representative and most logical statesman.
His extreme utterances are greeted by many as the bugle-blasts of a
great leader. We constantly read articles in Southern newspapers
and reports of public speeches made by Southern men which bear a
striking resemblance to the pro-slavery arguments I remember to have
heard before the Civil War, and they are brought forth with the
same passionate heat and dogmatic assurance to which we were then
accustomed--the same assertion of the Negro’s predestination for
serfdom; the same certainty that he will not work without ‘physical
compulsion’; the same contemptuous rejection of Negro education as a
thing that will only unfit him for work; the same prediction that the
elevation of the Negro will be the degradation of the whites; the same
angry demand that any advocacy of the Negro’s rights should be put down
in the South as an attack upon the safety of Southern society and as
treason to the Southern cause. * * *
“Thus may it be said, without exaggeration, that by striving to keep up
in the Southern States a condition of things which cannot fail to bring
forth constant irritation and unrest; which threatens to burden the
South with another ‘peculiar institution,’ by making the bulk of its
laboring force again a clog to progressive development, and to put the
South once more in a position provokingly offensive to the moral sense
and the enlightened spirit of the world outside, the reactionists are
the worst enemies the Southern people have to fear. * * *
“A body of high-minded and enlightened Southerners may gradually
succeed in convincing even many of the most prejudiced of their people
that white ignorance and lawlessness are just as bad and dangerous as
black ignorance and lawlessness; that black patriotism, integrity,
ability, industry, usefulness, good citizenship and public spirit are
just as good and as much entitled to respect and reward as capabilities
and virtues of the same name among whites; that the rights of the white
man under the Constitution are no more sacred than those of the black
man; that neither white nor black can override the rights of the other
without eventually endangering his own; and that the Negro question
can finally be settled so as to stay settled only on the basis of
the fundamental law of the land as it stands, by fair observance of
that law and not by any tricky circumvention of it. Such a campaign
for truth and justice, carried on by the high-minded and enlightened
Southerners without any party spirit--rather favoring the view that
whites as well as blacks should divide their votes according to their
inclinations between different political parties--will promise the
desired result in the same measure as it is carried on with gentle,
patient and persuasive dignity, but also with that unflinching courage
which is, above all things, needed to assert that most important
freedom--the freedom of inquiry and discussion against traditional
and deep-rooted prejudice--a courage which can be daunted neither by
the hootings of the mob nor by the supercilious jeers of fashionable
society, but goes steadily on doing its work with indomitable tenacity
of purpose.
“WHAT THE ‘NEW YORK EVENING POST’ THINKS
“This analysis of existing conditions and tendencies in the South is
one to which the South itself and the entire nation should give heed.
Mr. Schurz clearly perceives a dangerous drift. Slavery ideas are again
asserting themselves. The movement to extinguish the Negro’s political
rights is unconcealed. By craftily devised and inequitable laws the
suffrage is taken from him. With all this go naturally the desire and
purpose to keep him forever ‘alongside the mule.’ Negro education is
looked upon with increasing hostility. Every door of hope opening into
the professions is slammed in the face of black men merely because
they are black. The South works itself up into hysterics over the
President’s spontaneous recognition of manhood under a black skin.
While philanthropists and teachers are laboring to raise the Negro to
the full level of citizenship, an open and determined effort is making
at the South to thrust him back into serfdom. As Mr. Schurz says, the
issue is upon the country, for one tendency or the other must prevail.
“It is his view of the great urgency of the juncture which leads him to
address a moving appeal to the South’s best. He implores its leading
men to bestir themselves to prevent the lamentable injustice which is
threatened, and partly executed. By withstanding the mob; by upholding
the law; by ridding themselves of the silly dread of ‘social equality’;
by contending for Negro education of the broadest sort; by hailing
every step upward which the black man may take; by insisting upon
the equality of all men before the law, they can, Mr. Schurz argues
forcibly, do much to save the South and the country from the disgrace
and calamity of a new slavery. To this plea every humane patriot will
add his voice. Mr. Schurz’s paper is also a challenge to the mind and
conscience of the North. Unless they, too, respond to the cause of the
Negro--which to-day is the cause of simple justice--it will languish
and die.
“WHAT ‘THE OUTLOOK’ THINKS
“It must not be forgotten that the so-called race question is the only
capital which a small group of Southern politicians of the old school
still possess. They have no other questions or issues; they depend upon
the race question for a livelihood, and they use every occasion to say
the most extreme things and to set the match to all the inflammable
material in the South. To these politicians several occurrences which
have happened lately have been a great boon, and they are making the
most of them. But there is a large, influential and growing group of
Southern men, loyal to their section, equally loyal to the nation,
open-minded and high-minded, who are eager to give the South a new
policy, to rid it of sectionalism, to organize its spiritual, moral
and intellectual forces, to develop education, and to treat great
questions from a national rather than from a sectional point of view;
men like Governor Aycock, of North Carolina, and Governor Montague, of
Virginia. There is a whole group of educational leaders who represent
the best of the Old South and the best of the New. It is the duty of
wise, patriotic men in the North to cooperate with these new leaders;
to strengthen their hands; to recognize and aid the best sentiment in
the South, and to stimulate its activity. The Negro question can be
settled by cooperation of the North with the South, by sympathy, by
understanding; it can never be settled in any other way.
“WHAT GOV. AYCOCK, OF NORTH CAROLINA, THINKS
“I am proud of my state because we have solved the Negro problem,
which recently seems to have given you some trouble. We have taken
him out of politics, and have thereby secured good government under
any party, and laid foundations for the future development of both
races. We have secured peace and rendered prosperity a certainty. I
am inclined to give you our solution of this problem. It is, first,
as far as possible, under the Fifteenth Amendment, to disfranchise
him; after that, let him alone; quit writing about him; quit talking
about him; quit making him ‘the white man’s burden’; let him ‘tote
his own skillet’; quit coddling him; let him learn that no man, no
race, ever got anything worth the having that he did not himself earn;
that character is the outcome of sacrifice, and worth is the result of
toil; that, whatever his future may be, the present has in it for him
nothing that is not the product of industry, thrift, obedience to law
and uprightness; that he cannot, by resolution of council or league,
accomplish anything; that he can do much by work; that violence may
gratify his passions, but it cannot accomplish his ambition; that he
may rarely eat of the cooking equality, but he will always find when he
does that there is death in the pot. Let the white man determine that
no man shall by act or thought or speech cross this line, and the race
problem will be at an end.”
* * * * *
After reading these the Doctor explained that, about the time I left,
the Negro population of the South began to drift towards the Northern
states, where better wages were offered, on account of the improvements
going on there.
“The farms were the first to be affected by this turn in affairs,”
said the Doctor. “In fact, the Negroes who had no land very generally
left the farms and this so crippled the cotton industry that within
ten years after the disfranchising acts were passed, there wasn’t a
‘ten horse’ farm (to quote the expression used in the records) to be
found in some of the Southern states for miles and miles. Every Negro
laborer who went North found times so much better that he wrote back
for his friends. The disfranchising acts seemed to give the disorderly
element in Southern society a free hand. The result was that Negroes
were mobbed with impunity for the slightest offences. In one instance
I read of a Negro who accidentally stepped on a white man’s foot. He
was promptly knocked down. As it occurred in a public place where a
small crowd had gathered to look at base-ball bulletins, seven or eight
of the white by-standers in the crowd took a kick and a knock at him.
A policeman appeared on the scene, who arrested the Negro and put him
under lock and key--because he got knocked down!--as my father used to
say in relating the story. Then, too, the newspapers continued to hold
the Negro up to ridicule and whereas he formerly had some of his race
on juries, they were now excluded.[10]
“You can imagine that it was getting very uncomfortable for the
Negroes in the South about that time. Many of them left for the North
and West. Quite a number went to Africa--and Bishop Smith of the
African Methodist Church induced many to go to Hayti. Vast tracts of
land in the Southwestern part of the United States were opened up to
the cultivation of cotton by a national system of irrigation, and
the Government employed Negroes on these improvements and also in
the cultivation of the plant itself, after the irrigation system was
perfected.”
“What happened to the Southern white farmers?” I inquired.
“They moved to the cities in large numbers and engaged in
manufacturing. As you will see when you begin to travel with me the
South is now a great manufacturing country. This, they found later, was
a mistake, as they lost race vitality and became virtually the slaves
of the manufacturers, on whom they had to depend for bread from week
to week. The National Government, however, came to the relief of the
South in quite a substantial way (at the same time that it assumed
control of all coal and iron mines, and oil wells) by buying up the
cotton lands and parcelling them out to young Negroes at a small price,
accompanied with means and assistance for the production of the crop.
This was an act of the highest statesmanship and a great help in the
solution of the Negro problem. It should have come immediately after
reconstruction, but the intervening interests of political parties and
ambitious men prevented it. A matter of serious moment for a long time
was how to eliminate party and personal interests from the equation
of politics. Too often good measures were opposed by the different
political parties with an eye singly to these interests. The great
work of General O. O. Howard in connection with what was known as
the Freedmen’s Bureau was greatly hampered and met an untimely end
because of the selfishness and partisanship of that period. In fact,
this one feature has stood in the way of progress in this Government
from its earliest existence. Example after example might be cited where
party policy and personal interest has blocked the wheels of useful
legislation.
“Oxenstiern said, ‘See my son, with how little wisdom nations are
governed.’
“It is wonderful how tolerant the people of the world have been in
respect to bad government. No group of business men would have allowed
its directors to spend the company’s earnings in the way the rulers
of the world have done from time immemorial. America has overlooked
many of these points because of the unlimited opportunities here for
money making--let the high tide of prosperity once ebb and then these
defects become apparent! There were usually in a government office
twice as many employed to do small tasks as any business organization
would have thought of hiring, and they were paid excellent salaries. In
other words, the more places a boss could fill with his constituents
or friends, the more public money he could cause to be spent in his
district, the more sinecures he could get for his constituents,
the more popular he became. In addition to all this, he wasted
the people’s money with long speeches which were often printed and
distributed at the Government’s expense. The National Congress formerly
was a most expensive institution. Its methods of business were highly
extravagant and very often the time consumed resulted in accomplishing
nothing more than a mere pittance, perhaps, of the work to be done;
and that was carried through because of party advantage or personal
interest.”